Palm/Passion Sunday: Emptying is Our Goal, in Order to be Filled with Life

This Sunday we enter the sacred time of Holy Week, beginning with Palm/Passion Sunday, set to Gabriel Faure’s Requiem, and a children’s drama of the Palm Procession! The story challenges us to choose what to hold onto and what to let go.

Buddhists talk of emptiness, Taoists talk of emptiness, and Christian spiritual masters talk of emptiness. They mean the letting go of the selfish self, letting go of attachment to things. The Apostle Paul said, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who…emptied himself….to the point of death—even death on a cross.” The Passion story is all about the transforming, self-emptying that Christ calls us to undergo when he says, “ Take up your cross and follow me.” It is not the noun, but the verb, that we need. Not emptiness, but emptying that is our goal; letting go of one thing so another can take hold of us. We empty of selfishness and fill with Spirit, we empty of fear and fill with love, we empty of desire and find we have everything we need, we let go of our old narrow way of life and fill with the life that really is life.

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At Skyline, we’re committed to nurturing the spiritual development of children and youth by equipping them with the tools they need to discover faith-filled answers… for themselves.

God has no hands but your hands, no feet but your feet, no face but your face. Join us in cultivating a more just and compassionate world, working together to understand and meet the real needs of our local community (Food Bank) and beyond (Sierra Leone School).

At Skyline, we’re committed to nurturing the spiritual development of children and youth by equipping them with the tools they need to discover faith-filled answers… for themselves.

We recognize the fragility of the earth and our own capacity to do harm. It is urgent that, as earth’s stewards, we make a commitment to our children and future generations to minimize our impact on the earth. We are working locally and globally in these efforts.